Recently we got the below issue raised by the user on form load of one of the entities.
Most of the times this issue will arise because of the control / attribute being referenced in the JavaScript, being not available on the form.
And same was the case here, one of the JavaScript’s associated with the ribbon button, was referring to business process field (header_process_xxxxx) which was not available on the form.
Hope it helps..
The scan business card feature added as part of release wave 2, allows salespeople to quickly scan business cards using the Quick Create Form. The scanner reads the information from the card and populates the corresponding mapped fields in the record.
Out of the box, it is available in quick create form of lead and contact entity.
To specify the mapping for the business card control fields, navigate to Settings – Customizations and open the Quick Create form and select the Business Card Control and go to the Controls tab for its properties.
Click on the edit icon for the field and specify the mapping.
To enable for entities other than lead and contact, open the quick create form of that entity for customization and select either single or multiple lines of text field as a placeholder and add the business card control to it.
Followed by appropriate mapping of properties to the fields of that entity.
To see it in action let us create a new lead record using it’s quick create form. On click on the Scan Business Card button and selecting an image we get the values populated on the form.
Make sure to enable the free trial of AI Builder.
We can see the business card attached/saved with the record.
This behaviour can be configured.
Navigate to Sales Tab of System Settings
Few points to consider here
Hope it helps..
Continuing our previous post where we used the replication package
here we will see how we can use the synchronization service for bi-directional sync.
Below of the prerequisites of synchronization package to perform bi-directional sync –
So here we need to alter the SQL Azure’s Contact table that was auto-created earlier by the Replication package to have the auto-generated primary key.
Connect to the SQL Azure database using Skyvia’s Query service and perform the alter operation
Or use the Query Editor (preview) of Azure
With necessary changes made, let us create a new Synchronization package
Specify the connection and click on Add Task to create the synchronization task.
We have specified contact entity from Dynamics CRM Source and contact table in SQL Azure which was earlier created for us by the replication package.
It automatically maps all the columns here based on the column name.
We can also manually specify mapping here for both Source To Target and Target to Source fields to be used for sync.
Click on Finish once done with the mapping.
Similarly to replication packages, the synchronization packages can be scheduled.
Click on Save to create the Task.
Click on Run
The run history shows the 220 records synced from Dynamics CRM to SQL Azure.
We can see the 220 records created in our SQL Azure DB
Now let us update a record in SQL Azure and run the package again.
We can see the record updated in Dynamics CRM
Now let us delete a few records from Azure SQL and run the package
We can see the records delete from Dynamics CRM
Similarly, let us delete a couple of records from Dynamics CRM and run the package
We can see the 8 records deleted in the destination SQL Azure
Thus, we saw how easy it is to do bi-directional sync using Skyvia’s Synchronization package.
Hope it helps..
In the earlier post, we saw how we can use Skyvia’s query feature to execute SQL command against our Dynamics 365 CE
In this post, we will cover how we can use Skyvia’s replication feature to create a copy of our cloud data i.e. Dynamics 365 Online data in a relational database like SQL Server and most interestingly keep it up to date automatically with basic configuration steps.
Creating replication of cloud data can be useful in different data integration scenarios and most importantly for reporting and data analysis need as with online we are limited with the use of Fetch XML.
The Skyvia’s replication service takes care of syncing Create, Update and Delete operation performed on Dynamics 365 Entity records with the destination SQL Database.
For this we need to Skyvia expects an object’s key as well as modifiedon, createdon fields to be included for replication.
For delete to work it expects, audit history to be enabled on that Entity.
In this post, we will take a simple example of replicating Contact entity records from Dynamics 365 Online to SQL Azure.
Login to Skyvia
https://app.skyvia.com/#/packages
Create the connections
Source Dynamics CRM Connection:
Destination SQL Azure Connection:
We have a database named SampleDB already created in SQL Azure.
With connections created, now let us create a new package of type replication
For the replication, we have specified source connection as the CRM connection and destination as the SQL Azure.
We have selected the option of Incremental Updates along with Create Tables and Drop Tables option which will delete if there is an existing table of the same name as the entity and will create a new one.
In the Select Objects section, we have a specified Contact entity. We can also select multiple entities for replication.
Edit task option in the selected entity let us specify the fields and filter criteria on the source.
We also have the option of scheduling that we will look at in the end of the post.
Save the package and click on Run to see it in action.
While it is running, the Run History section shows the details
It auto refreshes with all the details.
We can see the 228 records of contact records replicated in SQL Azure.
Now let us create a new contact and run the package again.
Here we have created a contact record as shown below in CRM.
On running the package, we can see that it has added a new record in the Run History
Back in SQL Azure also our count has increased to 229.
Now let us update one of the records in the source and run the package. The run history shows one of the records being updated.
Finally, let us delete a couple of records (9) from the source and run the package. (We need to make sure we have enabled Audit on Contact entity for delete to work)
Back in SQL Azure, we can see total record count decreased
Here we were running the package manually, however, in real-world scenarios we would be scheduling it.
For this, we can edit our package and navigate to the Schedule section and click on Set Schedule.
For e.g. we have scheduled here it to run every hour starting from 6 p.m. till 10 a.m.
On save, we can check the run history
Thus, we saw how easy it is to replicate the data from Dynamics 365 CE to our SQL Database using Skyvia’s Integration service.
To achieve the same using Scribe Online Replication Service
and KingswaySoft
Hope it helps..
Let us start from the scenario that the enterprise has decided to use Microsoft Dynamics CRM /365 CE as a preferred customer relationship solution for their organization.
For a large enterprise and/or having multiple different departments, the first question that comes up is, do they need to have a single instance or organization or multiple instance or organization. Well, that decision is not that easy but one thing is for sure the decision should be made as early as possible in the project.
Well you could refer to these posts that could help us to make the decision
Now suppose we have made the decision to go with the single instance \ organization, so what are some of the key points we need to consider.
There could be multiple ways of implementing and defining the segregation layer as well as what needs to be shared from data and customization perspective among the different business units, the most important being the security model and the business unit structure being one of the key components of it.
Check out the below Webinar –
http://www.xrmcoaches.com/2017/07/free-webinar-friday-creating-your-dynamics-365-security-model/
also listen to the below podcast to get some guidance around the setting up the security model
http://crmmvppodcast.com/episode-19-setting-up-your-security-architecture-like-a-crm-mvp
In one of our projects, the way we segregated different departments, after defining the appropriate business unit structure, was by having the Business Unit lookup (custom field) in all the common entities that were being shared by the departments and populating that field accordingly, every time record is created either through User Interface or through code and to refer the same field in the customizations (plugin, workflow etc.) as and when applicable.
In the other project, we were referring to the Business Unit lookup field in the System User / Team Entity.
Well there could be multiple ways of doing the same with its own pros and cons.
But what if you have already implemented for one of the units and didn’t consider that the same instance would need to be extended to accommodate the different business unit(s).
Well, then it is time to modify a couple of things to make the Business Unit structure scalable (if it is not).
Let us go through the each of the main components one by one and how they can be segregated among different business units.
Wrong root business unit name?
Set Parent Business Unit lookup field as optional, open the Business Unit record and rename it.
Need to rename the organization?
For Online à
Navigate to Admin Portal, select the instance and click on edit and update the organization name and if required the URL as well as shown below.
For On-Premise à
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/darrenliu/2013/09/21/change-crm-organization-display-name/
Forms
Create separate new Main forms for different business units.
Enable appropriate security roles for the Form.
Views
Fields
Reuse the fields that are common instead of ending up creating a large number of fields.
Field security profiles can also be used if required when certain entity’s records are shared across the business unit and we want to hide the sensitive information.
Business Rules
Business rule can be configured to run on the scope of Form instead of the Entity.
Dashboards
For Dashboards, we can enable the security roles.
Workflows
Plugins
Have a field in the records to identify to which Business Unit it belongs to and check for this field as the first thing in the plugin or check for the Business Unit of the user under whose context the plugin is getting fired or use the secure \ unsecure configuration etc. it purely depends upon the way the segregation logic has been implemented.
SLAs
Use SLA lookup field to apply the SLA dynamically through plugin or workflow.
Business Process Flow
If there are multiple business process flow, make sure appropriate one is applied
Apply business process flow while creating an entity record.
There would be multiple other key points to be considered apart from the one listed above specific to each implementation; the above points are some of the things that can be taken as guidelines.
Lastly we must consider creating different apps for different department \ teams\ users and add required solution components to it.
Please feel free to add comments and share your thoughts.
Hope it helps..
Recently after upgrade of our Dynamics 365 CE from 8.2 to 9.1, when the System Administrator tried importing the solution (managed), he got the below error
The workflow cannot be published or unpublished by someone who is not its owner.
Error while importing workflow {ec05f40d-fd14-46ab-96b3-be1f5b108ef3} type Workflow name Marketing List – Update CT Relationship: The workflow cannot be published or unpublished by someone who is not its owner.
What the error says is that the user who is importing the solution needs to be the owner of the workflow that is there in that solution.
http://gonzaloruizcrm.blogspot.com/2011/05/processesworkflow-ownership-faqs.html
The thing was that we have never got this issue earlier for that System Admin user and we would have imported the solution at least 10 times earlier as well. This time the only thing different was that it was in the newer version 9.1
Changing the owner of the workflow and assigning it to the one who is importing will fix this issue. However interestingly and as expected when we tried importing the same solution using a different system administrator (again not the owner of the workflow in the target system), the import was successful with warning.
“The original workflow definition has been deactivated and replaced”
Read the below post to understand how workflows are managed internally
https://www.inogic.com/blog/2010/11/workflows-behind-the-scene/
Please share your thoughts, if someone has faced this issue recently and how they managed to fix this?
And what caused the issue to the first system admin and worked for the other.
In theory, requesting the backup of the online database seems very easy and straightforward. We basically need to raise a support ticket with Microsoft and provide the following details.
We had requested the same, some 3 weeks back. In our case, the Database size of our production was around 600 GB out of which 200 GB were occupied by Audit Data. For some business-specific reason, we wanted to have the backup of Audit Data with us before we delete it. Now, this Audit has a separate story with it, when we tried deleting it from UI we got the SQL Time Out issue and on raising the support ticket when Support Team tried the same through back end it, resulted in our Production Server being down briefly for few minutes. We also tried to take the back up through 3rd party tools using SSIS, however again we ran into some issue where the tool was not able to pull the Audit Data for few of the entities.
Well to cut the story short, it is around 21 days after we raised the request, and we are yet to receive the backup of our production database, we have been told that support team is actively working on it and it is because of the large size of the organization.
Will keep posting the update on the backup and the Audit deletion.
The purpose of this blog post was to share that certain things might seem straightforward and would have taken maximum few hours, could still run into issues and challenges causing delays. So, when we plan for it we need to aware of these factors as well.
Hope it helps..
The day has come when we had scheduled the upgrade of our Dynamics 365 instance Test Instance(from 8.2 to 9.0).
We can see the below message during the scheduled time à “The update will being within 24 hours. No rescheduling is available”.
The following Reschedule Update option will go missing during the scheduled time.
After waiting for few minutes, we see the Update Status as Queue (Not Started)
Followed by the status as “Database Upgrade”
In between the Status message will be Backup and Restore.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-in/dynamics365/customer-engagement/admin/manage-updates#update-status
Then it kept interchanging the status from Updating Instance (with no status) to Updating Instance – Database Upgrade for close to 2.5 hours.
Then although the status was Updating Instance the Open link got enabled after 2.5 hours.
Which opened the following notification
And finally, after 10 minutes or so à
We were all set with version 9.1
In total it took around 3 hours approximately.
Time to enjoy the successful upgrade and explore the new features ..
Make sure the Solution is compatible to Dynamics 365 (8.2), for this check the Version Compatibility
Upgrade the existing CRM 2016 On-Premise Server to CRM 2016 (8.1) for its solution to be compatible with Dynamics 365 Online using cumulative updates.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/3142345/microsoft-dynamics-365-onpremise-cumulative-updates
If upgrading from previous version i.e. prior to CRM 2016, use “Migrate by using a new instance of Microsoft SQL Server” approach
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh699669.aspx
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh699747.aspx
Once updated to compatible CRM 2016 On Premise (8.1), go to settings à customizations and export the existing solutions or create a new solution, add all the required solution components to it as unmanaged which will be imported to the new Dynamics 365 online environment.
Create a new Dynamics 365 Online Environment and synchronize it with your existing Active Directory
With solution ready and imported to new Dynamics 365 Online, next step is migration of data.
Consider using a data migration tool like KingswaySoft.
Check out their Migration Starter Pack.
or Scribe
https://www.scribesoft.com/solutions/dynamics-365/
Use following tools to update the JavaScript to Version 9.0 of XrmToolBox.
https://www.xrmtoolbox.com/plugins/XrmToolBox.Dynamics365V9JavascriptValidator/
https://www.xrmtoolbox.com/plugins/MsCrmTools.ScriptsFinder/
https://community.dynamics.com/crm/b/develop1/archive/2017/11/11/executioncontext-hits-the-big-time
Update JavaScript to use Web API.
https://github.com/jlattimer/CRMRESTBuilder
SQL Based report, if possible, needs to be converted to use Fetch XML. Use the following tool to speed up the process.
If the reports are too complex, plan to use Power BI reports.
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn708055.aspx
Plugin and Custom workflow needs to be updated to run in an isolated environment i.e. sandbox along with references to the latest SDK assemblies.
https://www.nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.CrmSdk.CoreAssemblies/
If the existing On-Premise is integrated to other applications, make sure they can still talk with new Dynamics 365 Online.
Recurring jobs if needed, can be deployed to Azure as Azure WebJobs.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/app-service/websites-dotnet-deploy-webjobs
Use Hybrid Connection to talk with On-Prem resources.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/app-service/app-service-hybrid-connections
These were some of the points I could quickly think of. Please share your thoughts and experiences in comments. I’d update this list.
Do check out :
Microsoft Dynamics CRM (on-premises) to Microsoft Dynamics
Online Migration Guide
Hope it helps..
While configuring the Data Export Service we got the below error while validating the profile
It mostly occurs if there is some issue with the connection string specified in the PowerShell Script used for generating the key vault.
Always copy the connection string from the Azure SQL Connection Strings property and double check the username and password provided there. And make sure the user specified has all the required rights.
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt744592.aspx#Anchor_1
Correcting the connection string resulted in successful validation of the export profile.
Hope it helps..
In previous posts we covered
Creating a Power BI Report using Dynamics 365 Online Service.
Publishing it and Showing it inside Dynamics 365 and scheduling its Refresh.
Apart from creating our own Power BI Report another way of quickly be up and running is to use the Content Packs provided by Third Party Service, for e.g. here we will be using Sales Analytics for Dynamics 365 content pack provided by Microsoft.
Login to the Power BI service, click on Get Data, select Services.
Select Apps and choose the Sales Analytics for Dynamics 365 from the AppSource.
If we search for Dynamics 365, we can see around 15 Apps provided by Microsoft.
Back into our Sales Analytics for Dynamics 365 App, when we click on Get in now we are presented with the option where we need to Specify the URL of our Dynamics CRM Online Service and Fiscal Year End Month Number for that organization.
In the next screen, we need to select OAuth2 as the authentication method and followed by signing in.
This installs the app which would be available in the Apps section.
Clicking on the installed Sales Analytics App opens the Dashboard
Clicking on Ask a question about your data inside Dashboard allows us to analyze the data by allowing us to choose the criteria
Here we have filtered the accounts by created on by month along with the owner
Also, we can see around 10 different reports created inside that app.
Similarly, we can create our own Content Packs to be shared with either specific group or with the entire organization.
Click on settings gear inside Power BI Service and select Create Content Pack
Here we are creating a content pack choosing the Dashboard, Reports and the Dataset that we created earlier in the previous posts.
Once published, the user 2 can click on Get Data and search for and can see the content pack.
Clicking on Connect adds the Dashboard, Report, and the corresponding Dataset to the My Workspace of the user. Only the user who had created the content pack can edit the artifacts that are part of Content Pack, however, the other user of the organization can save a copy of it and can work on it.
More on it
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/service-organizational-content-pack-manage-update-delete
Hope it helps..
In the previous post, we used Dynamics 365 Dashboard and Power BI Tile to show Power BI Dashboard and report inside Dynamics 365.
Now as a next step, we want to make sure that the users are looking at the latest data possible inside the Dashboard\Reports.
In case of Online Services like Dynamics 365 (Online), we have the option to manually Refresh the data.
To see it in action, let us create a lead record in Dynamics 365.
This is how our Dashboard looks like for now à
Now back in Power BI Service right, click on ellipsis for the Dataset and select Refresh Now.
We can see the newly created lead in our Power BI Report inside Power BI Service and Dynamics 365 CE.
The other option we have is to Schedule the refresh.
Navigate to the Dataset and select Schedule Refresh
We can select the Refresh Frequency as Daily or Weekly.
And we can set it to refresh up to 8 times per day as shown below.
With Power BI Pro License, we can complete the scheduled refresh 8 times a day whereas the Power BI Premium allows the refresh up to 48 times per day.
https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi-premium/
Some helpful links
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/refresh-scheduled-refresh
https://www.powerobjects.com/2018/01/11/power-bi-data-refresh-performance/
https://crmtipoftheday.com/category/power-bi/
Hope it helps..
In the previous post, we learned how to create a simple Power BI Report using Power BI Desktop
https://nishantrana.me/2018/08/20/power-bi-with-dynamics-365-ce-creating-report/
Now let us publish the report to Power BI Service from within the Power BI Desktop.
To do so, select the Publish button
Publish window will ask us to save the report file (if not saved) before we could publish it.
Here we are publishing it to the default “My Workspace” app workspace within Power BI Service.
Publishing the report from Power BI Desktop publishes both the report and dataset associated to it in the Power BI Service. We can think of DataSet as the Database.
After successful publish we can see the Report and Dataset being added inside the Power BI Service (https://app.powerbi.com)
From with Power BI Service, we have the option of Publishing the report on Web so that it could be accessed by anyone having that URL.
To do so,
Select File
à
Publish to Web to publish it.
The Embed dialog box pops up as shown below with all the information.
Clicking on Create Embed Code will open the confirmation dialog box, that shows the potential risk associated with sharing the information over the internet.
Here, clicking on Publish generates the link for the report and also the HTML code which can be used for embedding it within an IFrame.
Within Dynamics 365 CE, we can use this public URL to show it inside the IFrame component of the Dashboard.
The report within Dynamics 365 CE’s Dashboard.
Next, we will see how to create Dashboard from the reports created and how to share them with other users and how to use the Power BI Dashboard and Power BI Tiles feature of Dynamics 365.
Hope it helps.
To begin with, let us first create a Dynamics 365 Trial.
After our CRM trial is setup up successfully, we will install the OOB Sample Data which we would be using for creating the Power BI report.
Next, we need to create a free trial for the above user to use Power BI Service.
Go to Power BI site, and click on Start Free to get started.
Use the same user account (trial) that was used to set up the Dynamics 365 trial.
https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us
Note: If we already have an organization account with Power BI License we can use it to log in to Power BI else can associate a free trial to the same organization account instead of creating a new one. The gmail, hotmail, yahoo etc personal account are not allowed. https://app.powerbi.com/.
Download the Power BI Desktop as well as click on Try Free.
Power BI Desktop is basically a feature rich windows application that allows us to get data from various services online or on-premise and develop Dashboard and Reports efficiently.
The alternate way to download is through Microsoft Downloads siteà
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=45331
After installing it and signing in and click on Get Data ribbon button to connect to the Dynamics CRM Online.
Select Dynamics 365 Online as the Online Services to connect to.
Specify the Web API URL of the instance.
Copy it from Customization à Developer Resources
Select the Organization Account and Sign in to the CRM Instance.
In the Navigator window, we have searched Lead entity and clicked on Edit to select the columns that we need for our sample report.
In the Query Editor window, click on “Choose Columns“, we have selected the Revenue, Created On, Subject and Owning
User field to be used for the report.
Now to get the Full Name of the system user for Owning User, expand that column, and select Full Name as the value to be displayed as shown below.
Click on Close and Apply to apply the changes to the query and to go back to the main editor.
Back in the main editor, we can see the fields added.
Now from the Visualizations section pick any of chart type.
Here we have picked a Stacked Bar Chart to start with. We can drag the fields and specify Area, Legend, and Value and also use the Filters section to generate the report as shown below.
The report after adding the fields à
Similarly, we can add our filter in the FILTER section to filter the records further as shown below
We can also add multiple charts in the report by selecting it from the Visualizations section.
For e.g. here we have used a Clustered Column chart to see all the leads based on Owner and Created On Date.
This completes the creation of simple reports which uses Dynamics 365 Online as Data Source.
In the next post, we’d publish this report to Power BI Service and display it within Dynamics 365 CE.
Hope it helps..
We got this error while trying to export around 70K data through export to excel in Dynamics 365 CE.
Log file gave us detail of the error i.e. Excel file exceeded size lime of 4 MB.
One workaround is to export small set of data (page wise) by applying some order criteria (either in the Grid or through Advanced Find)
Or better use the wonderful Export to Excel tool in XrmToolBox
https://dreamingincrm.com/2015/05/30/new-xrmtoolbox-plugin-export-to-excel/
It took few mins to export the records in excel and the file size was close to 19 MB.
Hope it helps..
Few weeks back while working on a migration project in which we were using Informatica Cloud’s Dynamics 365 for Sales connector, we used to get the below error while trying to perform the Upsert operation in Batch.
“In CRM WRITER_1_*_1> CCI_WRITER_1000 [ERROR] Update/Upsert operation is not supported in non-transaction mode. “
For this we had raised a support ticket with Informatica. The response we got was that this feature will be available in the new IICS Platform.
So recently we migrated to IICS from ICS and were glad to see this feature available i.e. “performing Upsert operation in Batch“.
Few other enhancements in the connector includes
Get all the details here
Hope it helps..
Hi,
Recently we were writing a plugin that should fire when a record is activated.
In this kind of scenario, it is suggested\recommended to register plugin in both SetState and SetStateDynamicEntity message.
https://community.dynamics.com/crm/f/117/t/184070
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/crm/2008/03/07/developing-plug-ins-for-crm-4-0/
Interestingly we had the following observations
Plugin Trace log records :-
We are yet to figure out when exactly the SetState will be fired. Please share your thoughts and experience around the same.
Hope it helps..
While exporting a solution from our DEV, we got the below exception.
As the messages suggests to fix it we need to activate the process (which will create the corresponding entity for the BPF and add the entity in the solution). Or if already created simply add that entity if missing in the solution.
So we Activated the BPF.
Added the BPF specific entity.
Which then allowed us to export the solution.
Hope it helps..
Update – 25 June 2018 – Took nearly 20 days to get both the instances up.
Update – 12 June 2018 – Support Engineer has been not been able to resolve either of the support ticket which were raised last Thursday 7th June. One instance is not opening and the other instance is not restored with the backup we had requested. They are unable to find the backup till now.
Recently we tried copying our DEV to one of the TEST instances. The idea was we were upgrading the click dimensions solution in our DEV so we wanted to make sure everything works fine after the upgrade and in case it didn’t we could then again copy it back from the TEST.
We had faced back and restore issues (instance failed) in the past so decided to go the Copy instance way this time.
However, we got the Instance Failed error on the TEST instance to which we were copying DEV to.
Interestingly the Edit, Reset, Delete etc option were still available and we could open the TEST instance (the original, as the copy of DEV had failed) without any issues.
Then we thought of giving a try again and started copy from DEV to TEST again. This time again it failed. And with no option of Edit, Reset, delete etc. and the Instance was also not opening.
The error à
Along with that we also tried Restoring the Backup in one of the other TEST instances, that also expectedly failed.
So basically, we ended up with 2 unusable instances.
A few weeks back also we faced the same with our Dev environment and the only way out was to raise the support ticket with Microsoft. That time it took 5 days for DEV to be restored. Imagine the development activity that came to halt.
Last year also we had faced this issue in Production and had to work with the support team for 16 – 20 hours continuously to get it restored.
So, if we have some critical activity planned like Production Deployment and we are counting on Back and Restore or Copy an instance to rescue us in case anything goes wrong after production deployment, we need to plan for this Instance Failure as well while restoring or copying.
Basically, be ready to raise a support ticket with the highest severity to restore things back, which could take hours or in worst case days and do all the production deployment over the weekend or have enough downtime allocated.
Hope it helps..
Recently while working in data migration project, we had a requirement to insert a record in CRM from SQL Database and assign it to the team insert.
For e.g.
We had a Transaction Record that had a Brand lookup in it i.e. n – 1 relationship.
And the Brand record had a lookup of Team in it again n – 1. So basically, while inserting the transaction record we wanted to assign the record to the team of the corresponding brand in it.
So, for this, we had to set the owner id and owner id type field while inserting the record.
And for owner id i.e. team GUID we had to do a lookup on the Brand entity.
To achieve so, we did the following step
Added 2 Data flow task in the Control Flow, one for Caching the Brand entity’s detail and other for using the fetching data from SQL DB, Lookup Transformation task and inserting the data into CRM.
For the first data flow task,
We added the Dynamics CRM Source and fetched the Brand Name and Team Lookup’ GUID field.
name field which will be used for mapping and teamid field whose value we need from it.
Then we added a Cache Transform task with following details,
Now for our second data task flow,
First, we added the OLE DB Source to fetch data from the source SQL View, having Brand (string) column in it.
Then we added the Lookup Transformation task with following properties,
Setting Connection to Cache Connection Manager defined earlier.
Now the most important part, the columns properties. Here we defined the mapping between the Brand field of the SQL View and name field of the Brand Entity of CRM and selected the teamid field as the lookup column whose value we would like to fetch as shown below.
Then we added Derived Column task to add one more column for specifying ownerid type field to be used in CRM Destination Component while mapping. We defined the field type as string and hardcoded the value as “team”.
And as the final step mapped the above fields to the corresponding ownerid and owneridtype field in CRM Destination Component for Create operation.
For ownerid, we selected the below option as we were setting the GUID of the team.
On running the package, we can see the transaction records getting created and properly assigned to the corresponding team of the brand.
The transaction record with Team set as Owner.
Brand record with Team lookup in it.
Hope it helps..
We’d get this error if we are trying to import a solution whose upgrade solution is already there in the target system.
So, either we need to Clone the Solution to remove the upgraded solution or we need to delete the Upgrade Solution. Deleting the Upgrade solution will only delete the solution it will not delete the components as it will already be there in the main solution whose upgrade has been imported.
Hope it helps..
We got this error while trying to import managed solution to our TEST environment.
The detail of the error message clearly tells the reason for the error.
The error was because that we had a similar a role with same name in our TEST environment, and in DEV we had renamed that existing role and had created a new role with similar name.
So, while trying to import the solution, CRM was getting confused as it was able to find the role with same name but different id.
To fix this either rename the Role in DEV and export and import it back or rename the role in TEST to and them import the same solution.
Hope it helps..
While trying to install a managed solution we were getting the below error
As the error message suggests, at the same time we had the solution upgrade (Apply Solution Upgrade) going on in the same environment.
Installing the solution worked after the solution upgrade successfully completed.
At times we might face SQL Timeout issue while trying to upgrade solution if it contains large number of components in it.
Hope it helps..
Informatica Cloud has recently released new connector for integration with Dynamics 365 named Dynamics 365 for Sales Connector, which uses Web API of Dynamics 365.
Below is how we specify the details of the connection –
Because of lack of documentation for the new connector, while trying to insert a record inside CRM and trying to setup a lookup field we struggled a lot.
Eventually, we realized the format that is required for setting the lookup field.
EntitySetName:(GUID)
i.e.
sab_fash_categories(72e0b837-e060-4a5c-b831-0e8266dd9a56)
Here sab_fash_categories is the EntitySetName of the custom entity sab_fash_item and it is being used as a lookup in another entity.
For the older version of the connector that used OrganizationService, the documentation is available which specifies the following format for the lookups
{SchemaName:GUID} i.e. the way we specify while setting EntityReference field
Hope it helps..
Recently while working with a Solution Patch we came to realize one of its limitation (or feature) which we weren’t aware of.
If we are trying to update a component through the patch, and that particular component has been customized in the target environment ( through default solution in case of managed), the update won’t work on that component.
Let us take a simple example to understand this.
Below we have created a solution with one workflow in it named Test Process.
Now let us export the solution as managed and import it in Test.
Now back in our DEV let us rename the Process and create a patch for it and import it in Test.
https://nishantrana.me/2016/09/22/creating-patches-solution-management-in-crm-2016/
We can see the update in the name after applying\importing the patch.
Now let us go back in our DEV and make some update in the name of the process and import it again in the Test.
We have selected the option of overwriting customizations here.
We can see the update in the TEST after importing the patch.
Now comes the interesting part, in the TEST environment, go to Settings – Customizations and rename the Process. Here we have appended “Updated” in its name.
Now let us import the same Patch Solution back in our TEST with Overwrite selected.
Unexpectedly, we do not see any change, the process is unchanged in the TEST even after importing the patch with Overwrite option. We expected it to be renamed to Test Process Patch Version 1 as it was in the patch solution, instead, it has the suffix Updated to it i.e. the changes that we made directly in the TEST through default solution.
The way we can now update it from DEV is to clone our solution there.
Import it to TEST and apply Solution Upgrade.
Below we can see the new version imported into the TEST and as expected the Process renamed to what it was in DEV.
Hope it helps..
Recenlty while trying to delete product records, we got the below error.
The quick way to figure out which associated entity’s record could have restricted the deletion of the record, open the 1:N relationship for the entity.
Search for any Parental, Referential Restrict Delete or any System relationship that has Restrict set for Delete action.
In our case it was the System relationship of Product with Opportunity Product
With Restrict Behavior set for Delete action.
Deleting all the opportunity product record allowed us to delete the Product records.
Hope it helps..
[Edit – (3 May 2018) – Multi Select Option Sets cannot be used inside Portal]
Few months back I wrote the following post about Multi Select Option Sets.
https://nishantrana.me/2017/10/15/multiselect-option-set-in-dynamics-365/
Here, let us look at the limitations associated with them,
Suppose I have the following multi select option set field created for contact entity.
But cannot be used as View Column
So basically, we need to be cautious before we make use of the multi select option sets in our solution.
Hope it helps..
